The difference between the Medieval ballades and the contemporary
ballads
When I speak about the medieval ballad,
I think always about the ballades which I have read in my school-book ( Lord
Randal, Robin Hood ). When I speak about the modern ballad I have in mind the
ballads from Bob Dylan, the Beatles and the Italian author F. De andrè. I think
they are the most important representatives and authors of the modern music.
It is very important to make the
difference between the word "song" and "ballad". The ballad is in its origin a
popular and poetic composition, it was spread
in the French poetry from troubadours. I want to talk only about the
ballad. Its metrical structure include a refrain, and its metres were "
endecasillabo" and "settenario". The author of the medieval ballad is more or
less unknown, we don't know their date of origin, they were everybody's
property and their text changed during the time. The author of the modern
ballads is always know, we can date them, their texts never changed. The second
difference which we can see between the ballads is their structure. The old one
have a very simple structure: they are composed of short stanzas of two or four
lines and they usually rhymed in some way. The modern ballads do not have any
particular form, they are composed very freely and they are higlily individual
work. They can have refrains ( repetition of words ) like the old ballads, but
it is not always the case. The old ballads were written for the unschooled and
illiterate people, the modern one are written for educated public, for the
intellectuals , and this fact mades a great difference between them. The
language of the old ballads is therefore very clear and simple, but the
language of the modern ballads can be very complicated and not easy to remember
and to understand. I can say that I prefer the medieval ballad, because they
are very simple and clear in their language and meaning
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